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While B.C. is touted as Canada’s Pacific gateway, under an NDP government it is apt to become the country’s drawbridge.

Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Pipeline? Forget it.

Expansion of Kinder Morgan’s TransMountain Pipeline? No way.

Tanker traffic off B.C.’s north coast? Never.

Coal exports out of West Coast ports? An abomination.

A new Raven coal mine on Vancouver Island, or a Prosperity gold copper mine in the Cariboo-Chilcotin, or BC Hydro’s Site C dam near Fort St. John? No, no and no.

And what of the Jumbo Glacier resort, a planned development near Invermere that would be North America’s only year-round ski playground? Once more, No.

As for any fracking for natural gas, New Democrats have pledged to “appoint an expert panel to conduct a broad public review of fracking, including public hearings and consultations with First Nations, local communities, industry, environment groups and citizens.”

The position on coal exports was outlined before the election campaign even began, by Delta North NDP MLA Guy Gentner.

He circulated a flyer in his riding, referring to a “Metro Vancouver application to develop a thermal coal port facility right along the world’s greatest salmon river, the Fraser.”

“We might as well call it for what it is — Delta will become the black lung of the Lower Mainland.”

According to the flyer, Ottawa and Christy Clark’s government have been acting to “compromise our environment, health and community in the name of global interests. World trade between North America and Asia uses Delta as its transportation corridor, increasing traffic congestion, depleting vital wetlands, forfeiting clean airsheds and jeopardizing our rivers and waterways for port developments.”

NDP spokeswoman Caroline Skelton added this week: “Projects like this should not escape proper scrutiny just because they are entities under federal control.”

Comox Valley NDP candidate Kassandra Dycke recently pronounced on the Raven Mine, promising 350 direct jobs and hundreds of indirect jobs over 17 years: “There is way too much at risk. Water quality, air quality and hundreds of long-term sustainable jobs in the shellfish industry are all potentially threatened by this proposal.”

B.C.’s New Democrats also oppose Taseko’s New Prosperity mine, the largest undeveloped gold and copper deposit in Canada, which would create 700 construction jobs, 550 mining jobs and 1,280 indirect jobs in the Cariboo.

B.C. mining industry groups — no doubt alarmed by such statements — last week launched a public campaign urging voters to pressure candidates to support their industry which, in 2010, provided “37,000 well paying direct and indirect jobs in B.C.,” as well as nearly $10 billion to the B.C. economy and $805 million in payments to government.

Speaking about the Jumbo Glacier year-round ski resort, offering 800 full-time jobs and a $20-million payroll, NDP MLA Norm Macdonald in March reported an NDP government would repeal legislation allowing for formation of the Jumbo resort municipality.

The resort is being forced on Kootenay residents, says Skelton, “despite outspoken opposition from the Ktunaxa Nation, the Union of B.C. Municipalities and local residents.”

Regarding BC Hydro’s proposed Site C dam in northeast B.C., NDP MLA Energy critic John Horgan told a reporter in February: I’m confident that in the first two years of an NDP government we won’t be building Site C.”

Stephen Harper is surely shaking his head.

His party’s perspective on economic development is the exact opposite of the one espoused by B.C.’s NDP.

With 42 federal seats on offer in B.C. in an expected 2015 election, the PM has to be concerned about a discordant relationship with any new provincial government in B.C.

Harper’s own economic modus operandi has been around jobs and growth, creating employment and economic prosperity for Canadians through exploitation of the country’s bountiful natural resources, and encouraging exports of same.

The Conservative leader will be alarmed by actions of any provincial government seeking to consistently place environment considerations ahead of economic ones.

In particular, Harper would disapprove of NDP leader Adrian Dix’s stand this week against a plan for expansion of the TransMountain pipeline, which would carry Alberta’s oil to tidewater for export to hungry Asian markets — especially if Northern Gateway, an alternative pipeline project, is unable to overcome environmental and aboriginal obstacles.

“It seems to me,” Dix pronounced this week, “that increasing from 80,000 barrels a day to 450,000 barrels a day (exported from Metro Vancouver in tankers) is a massive change in the nature of that operation.

“That’s a real problem.”

But what’s more of a problem is a seeming lack of appreciation on the NDP’s part that B.C. happens to have a resource-based economy. It’s highly dependent on its natural resources for jobs as well as government revenues.

The simple truth is, we don’t export a whole lot of solar panels or bean sprouts. And how many baristas and wilderness guides can B.C. employ? Yoga supply outlets supply only so much government revenue.

Indeed, people often complain about B.C. becoming a la-la land where only older people and the wealthy can afford to live, investing in real estate, or retiring.

There’s truth in that. Why else would Calgary, a much smaller city than Vancouver, have so many more head offices?

Now, if we shut down toxin-spewing industries in B.C., as many environmentalists and aboriginals would like, our air and water indeed would be fresher and tourism revenues higher. And who wouldn’t like that?

The trouble is, we’d have more difficulty sustaining the 4.4 million folks living here, and the social services they’re hooked on. We’d have an all-green economy but government ledgers bleeding red.

A balance surely is required. As the world transitions gradually to a greener economy, B.C. will transition along with it. But no one should expect that to happen all in one governing term.

Of course, if the NDP does get elected next month and there are fewer industrial jobs in B.C., the poor suckers among us who need to keep working for a living can always purchase parkas and move to Alberta.

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Barbara Yaffe: If B.C.'s NDP wins, those of us needing to work can always move to Alberta

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